Dual Personality
by DGtall
Summary: Post-movie. Tony and Pepper face their fears and try to move on.


I want to be you.

I want to be you.

I am your mornings. Sound**s** of footsteps down the laboratory stairway. The door sliding. The "to do" list read in a quiet, calm voice. Flights and travels planned in perfect order. Totally ignored. Repeated. White noise. You always know what to say. I want to be balanced. I want to be you.

I am your mornings. The last drops of coffee, drying out at the bottom of your cup. You can't stop working until dawn. You can't stop thinking, you can't stop inventing, you _physically _can't stop until you get everything right. Until every detail is in its right place, working with mathematical perfection. Sometimes it seems sometimes that you want to command even the electrons in atoms. Bigger details are too rough. I want to have this passion. I want to be you.

I am your dog. I get into useless fights on the street. I don't know why. Even if I know I'm going to lose, I'd still make a step towards it. It's my instinct, it's in my blood, it's an incurable disease. I bark and I bite. I bite and get bitten. My skin is becoming marked by scars. My heart is getting covered by scar tissue. It is barely able to pump my blood. I bite and get bitten. It's okay. Every time I get lost, I find my way home. I crawl back, covered in blood and dirt, I lose your trail and then find it again, a million times every night. I howl at your door. I howl my soul out, I howl until I am hoarse, until I can't take another breath. And if you're not home, I just curl tight and cold, and fall asleep, waiting. And when I wake up, you're always there. Like any dog, I want to be my master. I want to be you.

I am your dog. I stand guarding by your door. There I fall asleep and there I wake up, day after day. You give me food. You think you only pay me for my work and I think you just like having me around. You and I go hunting – you shoot, I bring the bag. Little gifts of blind devotion. Like any dog, I don't understand you, but I have simple faith in that you know better. Like any dog, I want to be my master. I want to be you.

I'll never be the same. I've destroyed too much, I've destroyed my own victory, it penetrates me, chills me, terrifies me. Tin Man is on the rescue mission for his heart. But my heart isn't velvet and sawdust; it's not even made of stone, it's cast out of metal. You still have it in you to smile. I want to be you.

I'll never be the same. I've seen too much. I've seen people change, disappear in the whirlwind of these days. I remember their eyes the moment before they were carried away by the hurricane. The Land of Oz is just a fairytale. You still can smile. Teach me how to move on. I want to be you.

The sky isn't just the sky anymore. It's a heavy ceiling made of lead and iron, scraped dull with fingernails of fallen heroes. If you fly too high, the sky would knock you back to the ground. I want to see the blue sky. Bright Disney blue with plushie toys of white clouds, just like the little children see it. I want to be you.

Gravity isn't gravity anymore. The Earth can't hold its own atmosphere and it's so hard to breathe down here. The air escapes into the space like the sparkling dust of confetti, slowly turning into the nothingness of vacuum. Walking here is like crossing a river, like walking through water. I want to walk tall, I want to breathe deep. I want to be you.

I can't sleep at night. I talk to machines pretending that I talk to people and sometimes it even seems they understand me. Illusions. Ideas, new creations are staring at me from every dark corner of my own house. Imagine your childhood fears invading your very grown-up life.

They say scientists live on, in their inventions, long after they die. Not exactly. I bury myself in my inventions. I wall myself up from life. I want to be alive. I want to be you.

I can't sleep at night. I read books, classics, the written word I can rely on. I hide among the pages of old folk tales, I wrap myself in them like in a blanket, feet tucked under myself in an old armchair. The papers are my pillows. The letters are my friends. I want to have something real. I want to be you.

I want to dream again. Teach me.

I want to know how to speak loud. Teach me.

I want to have a past.

I want to have a future.

I want to have confidence.

I want to have confidence.

I want to have somebody by my side.

I want to have somebody by my side.

I want to be you.

I want to be you.


End file.
